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Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

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Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#31

Post by myth_buster »

farmdawgnation wrote: post #16

This site appears to be hosted on Heroku according to the DNS information. www.flymaids.com. 3600 IN CNAME cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com. cleanerconnect.herokuapp.com. 300 IN CNAME us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. us-east-1-a.route.herokuapp.com. 60 IN A 23.21.224.165 Would the author have a case for emailing Heroku's abuse address and asking them to look into it or would this fall outside their purview? My hypothesis…

  Updated Date: 27-oct-2015
  Creation Date: 08-oct-2015
They be baffled by the page views they be getting! Would this be considered as "any publicity is good publicity"?

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#32

Post by nostromo »

Everyone is assuming that the founders sold the company data to Fly Maids, a brand-new company nobody has ever heard of before.

It's also possible one of the founders just spun up the new service themselves and copied over all of the customer records. If so, they may want to prepare to be sued by their previous investors.

It's one thing to fail after giving it the good ol' college try, but it's another entirely to strip the copper out of the walls on your way out.

Speculation aside, they should put out a statement to clarify the relationship between the companies and what's going on with their customers' data.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#33

Post by thaumaturgy »

johnsalzarulo wrote: post #19
rathboma wrote: post #2

You might want to obfuscate the last 4 digits of your credit card in that screenshot given how useful it is for hacking other systems.

Card's already canceled. Thanks though.

Do all of the online services you use also no longer use the last four of that card for authentication purposes over the phone? For instance, you can sometimes use the last four of the card on a GoDaddy account to get a password reset over the phone.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#34

Post by lemevi »

johnsalzarulo wrote: post #19
rathboma wrote: post #2

You might want to obfuscate the last 4 digits of your credit card in that screenshot given how useful it is for hacking other systems.

Card's already canceled. Thanks though.

Doesn't matter, it's still confidential information that can be used to verify you or used to social engineer more information about you. "Hi sir, I'm calling in because I lost access to my account, I don't have my current card, but I do have the last 4 of my previous that I used on this service, will that be good enough?"

Like don't reveal unnecessary information if you don't have to. It's low effort, high risk.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#35

Post by gk1 »

pavornyoh wrote: post #11
kajecounterhack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article, no.

That's a bit brazen to make those claims on the site. They can get into trouble for that and also ruin their own reputation. So I am thinking the site is a little joke? When you click on help and go to FAQs, it labels questions as "HOT". I think it is a joke.

You're underestimating how far people are willing to go to appear legit. Showing logos of companies who aren't your clients -- or of publications that never mentioned you -- is common. They know most people won't check to verify.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#36

Post by yarou »

Whomever is responsible for this should be blacklisted from receiving funding in the future.

This is a really scummy move, and the person behind it should be publicly humiliated so that they understand the error of their ways.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#37

Post by kornish »

nostromo wrote: post #32

Everyone is assuming that the founders sold the company data to Fly Maids, a brand-new company nobody has ever heard of before. It's also possible one of the founders just spun up the new service themselves and copied over all of the customer records. If so, they may want to prepare to be sued by their previous investors. It's one thing to fail after giving it the good ol' college try, but it's another entirely to st…

That was my first assumption as well - that one of the founders was continuing to work with the same idea under a different brand.

Whoever it was, they clearly capitalized on the market opening left in Homejoy's wake. A quick

  whois flymaids.com
yields

  Domain Name: flymaids.com
  Registry Domain ID: 1966895891_DOMAIN_COM-VRSN
  Registrar WHOIS Server: whois.godaddy.com
  Registrar URL: http://www.godaddy.com
  Update Date: 2015-10-08T04:34:58Z
  Creation Date: 2015-10-08T04:34:58Z
  Registrar Registration Expiration Date: 2016-10-08T04:34:58Z
  Registrar: GoDaddy.com, LLC
  Registrar IANA ID: 146
  Registrar Abuse Contact Email: abuse@godaddy.com
  ...
  Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
  ...
The site was only created in the last 3 weeks, and it was registered by someone who wanted to stay anonymous (which is, in fairness, very reasonable - Homejoy cofounder or not. Certainly not enough to draw a conclusion).

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#38

Post by pavornyoh »

gk1 wrote: post #35
pavornyoh wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit brazen to make those claims on the site. They can get into trouble for that and also ruin their own reputation. So I am thinking the site is a little joke? When you click on help and go to FAQs, it labels questions as "HOT". I think it is a joke.

You're underestimating how far people are willing to go to appear legit. Showing logos of companies who aren't your clients -- or of publications that never mentioned you -- is common. They know most people won't check to verify.

>You're underestimating how far people are willing to go to appear legit.

You are right. This is clearly a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#39

Post by JoblessWonder »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #28

What's the big deal? Homejoy is just hacking startup downfunding... (/s) I'd like to see some kind of stronger YC influence on ethics in the companies they fund. I realize that YC doesn't have any direct control over the companies, but it could be as simple as including good ethics in the traits they look for in startup founders. A while back I started compiling a list of YC companies that spammed or otherwise behave…

Does YC officially offer any ethics training/mentoring?

It would be an interesting offering even if there isn't any weight behind it. Sometimes I think the message, "Hey, maybe we should all think about what we are doing and whether or not it is in the best interest of something besides our bottom line" isn't something that is brought up/told to a lot of founders. However, whether or not they listen is totally up to them and I am fine with that.

Re: Didn’t Homejoy Shut Down?

#40

Post by enraged_camel »

I'm pretty sure I know what's going on. In order to pay off their debts, Homejoy must have sold user account information, including credit cards, to a bunch of local home cleaning businesses. A shit ton of them have been popping around over the past couple of years, modeled after the advice given in this subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/entrepreneurridealong

The difference with these local cleaning businesses is that they are developed and ran by amateurs, who often times copy each other (or the successful giants) down to the wording on the websites, with minor branding changes. They tend to be super low-budget, so Fly Maids probably paid some "web developer" $500 to develop their website and paid zero attention to security, PCI compliance, and so on. They then purchased a bunch of LA-based user accounts from the now-defunct Homejoy, who of course did not perform any due diligence.

Shitty situation to be sure. I definitely lost respect for the Homejoy founders, and will probably stay away from their next venture.

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